The Clock with no hands or numbers

In a bid to make timekeeping ‘interesting’, Inventor John Taylor has created a £1m mechanical clock called the “Time Eator” that has no hands or numbers. It features a giant grasshopper and has 60 slits cut on its face from where a light shows the time.

The Grasshopper is more than just a decoration. It moves around the clock, each step marking a second. Every time it moves, it triggers a blue flashing light that travels across the face until it stops at the current hour and minute. The clock is only accurate once every five minutes.

The Grasshopper metaphor was a tribute to English clockmaker Johan Harrison that had invented an internal mechanism that allowed the clock to move its gear at every swing of a pendulum in a grandfather clock. He had called it the grasshopper escapement. According to Dr. Taylor, he took that concept and turned the clock inside out so you could see the seconds being ‘eaten up by the grasshopper’.